his banquet be attended, and Allah’s banquet is the Quran.” It is like water that Allah sends down from heaven, as it is portrayed in the Book and the Sunnah. Those who distort the natural disposition and turn the heart away from its uprightness cause hearts to become sick and diseased. Allah has sent down His Book as a healing for what is in the hearts.

The calamities that befall the believer in this world are like the pains that afflict the body, through which it regains health and is rid of its corrupt humours. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“No illness, fatigue, worry, sorrow, distress, or harm befalls a believer—even the prick of a thorn—without Allah expiating his sins thereby.”

This is a fulfilment of His words:

“Whoever does evil will be recompensed for it.”

If a person is not purified of these diseases in this world so as to return in sound health, he will need to be purified of them in the Hereafter, and Allah will punish him. He is like someone whose corrupt humours have accumulated within him and who has taken no medicine to reduce them: they continue to accumulate until they destroy him. Hence the report:

“When people say of a sick person, ‘O Allah, have mercy on him,’ Allah says, ‘How am I to have mercy on him by removing the very thing through which I show him mercy?’”

The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Illness is an expiation: it sheds the sins of the afflicted person just as a dry tree sheds its leaves.”

Just as there are bodily illnesses from which a person may die as a martyr—as in the case of someone who dies of plague, an abdominal disease, or pleurisy, and likewise someone who dies by drowning, burning, or a collapsing building—so too among